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Check out Part 1, Super Metroid, here.
I can’t believe I overlooked this for 27 years! Twenty-seven. That may very well be longer than some of my readers have been alive! And I call myself a gamer, and an RPG one at that. There is no shame you can cast upon me that I don’t already feel, having missed this for nearly three decades, but better late than never, no? To be fair, I did give this a brief try around 2011, and it ended in abrupt failure after about 15 minutes. But after completing this for the first time, I am thrilled I finally gave it a fair chance.
If memory serves me correctly, I found it difficult all those years ago, but after picking it up again to start the month of June 2024, it wasn’t too tough. The start of the game requires careful, deliberate exploration, but as more of the gigantic castle is uncovered, there are a plethora of power-ups, weapons, and armor that make progression so much easier. So it wasn’t the challenge, was it the labyrinth? Thinking about it, I might have felt overwhelmed and at a point in life where I wasn’t ready for such a massive undertaking. Years after that, I beat Super Metroid and felt like that was more complex with better-hidden items, but that’s hindsight for you. My successful run-through of Super Metroid came in 2018. I’ve played a few other games that might be vaguely similar in level design and structure, in the sense that going back to old places with new powers can uncover a lot. Demon’s Crest comes to mind, and to a lesser extent, Holy Umbrella (Dondera no Mubou!) or Popful Mail, though again, mostly re-exploring the already trodden path.
While the story is nothing to write home about, SOTN is brilliant in the atmosphere it creates, much like Super Metroid from 3 years prior. There aren’t many games, even up until modern times, that can so effortlessly create such an ambiance. The screams of a dying enemy can be terrifying, and one sub-boss sheds hundreds upon hundreds of walking corpses each time it is struck. Truly hideous, but it is clear the developers knew what tone they were going for, slightly off-kilter with a healthy dose of horror, and stuck with it to resounding success.
Although I will mention that too many of the sound effects are god-awful, and playing this on the PS4, I found no way to turn off the noises coming from the controller, so even when muted, you would hear effects any time Alucard transformed, you warped, or an enemy was hit or killed. Thankfully, the soundtrack is superb and helps to create this mysterious, gloomy aura. There isn’t a single weak track.
Exploration of the castle is stunted at first, but several hidden items and power-ups help to dive deeper in and uncover more of it. If you are interested in avoiding the worst ending and extending your game two-fold, look up a walkthrough, as it is somewhat obtuse to find on your own as a first-time player. I reached the bad ending in four hours and thought to myself, “No way,” and a quick internet search confirmed, yes, pal, there is more to do here! Otherwise, as many hidden areas as there are, the game is shockingly intuitive.
I found that once you overcome that initial hurdle and learning curve, most enemies and bosses are easy to take down, with a few exceptions. That stationary boss with the flies around it and the gigantic lightning-casting bosses are the two prime examples. I should mention that, for a late 1990s game, stylistically, this has aged perfectly. Some of the bosses are grotesque, and overall, the animation is impressive, and everything feels fluid.
One room that made me want to pull my hair out was the agonizingly annoying gear room with endless streams of enemies that can turn you to stone. If there is an item to nullify stone, I missed it. I think sending infinite waves of enemies at you is a cheap way to try to increase the challenge, and in many other rooms, the game had a fairer way of giving gamers a run for their money.
Thankfully, there are save points generously spread throughout the gam,e which can heal Alucard to 100%. There is armor that heals with every few steps, but it wasn’t nearly as useful as you’d think. I found on-the-spot healing to be odd, as you have to go into the menu, equip the potion, hi-potion, or elixir, back out of the menu, push attack, and after a slight delay (which can feel like an eternity in the heat of battle), regain HP. But then you have to re-enter the menu and re-equip your weapon. If there was a better way to use healing items, I didn’t find it. Even for the PlayStation that is clumsy, not fixing that for the PS4 release is negligence. Why can’t I heal from the menu, or at least have a key assigned to items and heal with the press of a button?
Warp points are great in theory, but I would have liked to have each warp point given a name. This is a gigantic map, having more information, like a map key and labeling each section, would have helped a great deal in becoming more familiar with the castle. Save points are labelled in red and warp points are in yellow, but the map could have been much more helpful. Plus, there should have been a drop-down list to pick a specific warp point rather than having to warp from spot to spot until you found the location you wanted. Alucard moves around the warps in a specific order, but sometimes having to warp 4 or 5 times before getting to the desired destination felt silly. I was unable to find a way to warp from any one spot in the inverted to any one spot in the normal castle, too. You have to make your way to a specific warp point to switch between the two, which can needlessly tack on a lot of time. It would have been more seamless if every warp had allowed transfer to the other half, if that makes sense.
Still, uncovering every last room and secret is addictive in this game, and while I did not reach 200% (it was 199.2%), I felt accomplished. While there are some glaring flaws, mainly having to equip healing items at weapons, sound effects, lack of labels on the map, and inability to choose a specific warp point when warping, this is still an excellent game, and I still enjoyed every minute of the 12 and a half hours I spent with it. The positives far outweigh those drawbacks, and while cleaning up those few issues would have brought this to outstanding, this is still a fantastic game to try for newcomers and one I am sure I will revisit in the coming years.
Check out my analysis of the GBA and DS trilogies of Castlevania Metroidvanias!
Wayback Wednesday Volume 1: Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Trigger.